Batteries and Holy Ghosts
by abelothe
Summary: When Gideon Pines' parents accidentally abandon him in the strange town of Gravity Falls, he falls into the hospitality of an even stranger girl named Pacifica Southeast who sees a summer of opportunity with her new friend. But Gideon really doesn't want to stay longer than necessary in a town run by a couple of occult-obsessed fourteen-year-old twins. Reverse Pines AU.
1. Prologue

He appeared to the twins in a fierce frenzy of hot, orange flame.

Bill Cipher was the most powerful being those two had ever laid eyes on. So _why,_ he mulled, why were they not scared? Most people over the course of Cipher's centuries and centuries of human interaction would have large eyes and shaking terribly of a sort right about now.

But the twins' brown eyes looked at him dully, their mouths neither smiling nor frowning. They observed him respectfully and quietly.

And it was then Bill knew that Dipper and Mabel Gleeful were _different_ \- well, maybe not so much _different_ , as there will always be the occasionals who slip outside the norm. But Bill Cipher found himself quite shocked for a demon who had seen the fall of Rome itself.

"AH, DIPPER AND MABEL GLEEFUL," he started. Then he paused.

Both twins lifted an eyebrow. "Well...?" they asked in union.

Metaphorically, Bill Cipher began to sweat. He actually had not planned the encounter out this far. Usually, when he began with peoples' personal names they would fly into a frenzy shouting questions with useless answers like, "How do you know my name?" or "Who are you?" or, Bill Cipher's personal favorite, they would skip the haphazard introductions all together and fall on their knees, praying desperately to some deity who could not help them.

"WELL," he continued, still off-put by the Gleefuls' attitude. "I'M HERE TO MAKE YOUR LIVES BETTER. THAT'S RIGHT, I KNOW ALL ABOUT HOW YOUR PARENTS ABANDONED YOU WITH YOUR NEGLECTFUL GREAT-UNCLE. THEY THOUGHT YOU WERE A BURDEN! HE THINKS YOU'RE A BURDEN!"

And it could have been the demons' imagination, but if his one eye was not going bad, he would have sworn that the children's eyes widened as they glanced over to each other and shifted uncomfortably on the wooden floor.

Bill Cipher calmed himself down. It was all going okay now, maybe the kids had been a bit freakish in the beginning, but they would soon squeal in terror before the demon.

"So," the girl began. "You're like our fairy godmother?"

"WHAT? NO. I LEAVE THE PRETTY PINK BALLGOWNS TO MY SISTER. _I_ DO THE _REAL_ MAGIC." And with that, he popped a rabbit into existence. A dead rabbit. It fell on the floor with a pathetic _shloomp._ "HAHA. ROADKILL!"

The twins inspected the cadaver. If Bill Cipher had a mouth, he would have smiled with satisfaction. In any second now, their screams of terror would fill the attic bedroom with sweet, sweet cacophony. He closed his eye and waited.

…..Any moment now.

He opened his eye angrily. Their lungs should be sore by now! Did they not see - OH. The two children had gathered around the corpse and seemed to be morbidly interested in it, poking its bloodied stomach with their bare fingers and _\- eugh - tasting_ the blood.

The girl, Mabel Gleeful, poked two of her fingers into the decaying eyes and scooped them out. Bill could see the gore embedded under fingernails.

"I ADMIRE YOUR ENTHUSIASM, KIDS. BUT DON'T YOU WANNA HEAR MY PROPOSAL?"

"Shhh!" the girl scolded. She whipped her head of brown hair to scowl at the demon. "Can't you see we're busy?" And with that, she flicked the eyeballs skewered on her fingers in Bill's general direction.

Bill Cipher wiped the gore off his frontal facet. "L-LISTEN! IF YOU DON'T PAY ATTENTION I-I'M GOING TO LEAVE _RIGHT NOW!"_

Dipper lolled his head over to face the demon. "Alright, fine." He plunged his hand into the rabbit's exposed stomach.

Bill Cipher cleared his nonexistent throat. Alright. Okay. He could still do this. He was a demon, after all, and these were only silly little human children. "HOW ABOUT I GET RID OF YOUR STUPID UNCLE AND LOATHSOME PARENTS FOR THE SMALL PRICE OF NOTHING! I'LL EVEN REPLACE YOUR CARETAKERS WITH SOMEONE RESPONSIBLE JUST BECAUSE I'M SUCH A NICE GUY!"

The twins looked at each other, musing over the proposition. Twin telepathy, Bill Cipher assumed. Anyone could have telepathical powers with anyone else, but only if they were extraordinarily close. Twins seemed to have it more often than others simply because they were usually so close. And it looked like it was even stronger in the Gleeful twins - they had nobody else besides each other. Bill had watched over them for some while and their situation seemed desperate; their parents wanted nothing to do with them, their uncle only kept them for child support, and from what the demon could tell, they had no other friends, either.

They were miserable and he knew it. They would obviously take his deal for a better life and revenge on the family that had neglected them and he would give them a new caretaker - himself. It was simple really; once he had the twins' permission he would become their new guardian - and them his slaves.

"Actually," Dipper started. _"We'd_ like to make a deal with _you."_

Bill Cipher, the omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent demon stared. _WHY_. In the name of all things unholy, _why were these kids being so difficult?_ Had they never watched a horror movie? Never read a religious text? Didn't they know that demonic encounters _had_ to be handled a certain way? This was just stupid. Maybe it was because they were so young - they looked seven, eight, or nine at the most. Yeah. Little kids were stupid.

"OKAY," he said. "WHAT'S THE OFFER?"

Dipper whispered something to his sister, who nodded. The girl ran off to the old beat-up dresser, searching for something. She rummaged through the contents before giving up and looking under the bed instead. When that did not produce fruit, she finally reached her hand under a patched mattress before pulling out something small, cupped in her petite hand.

"HAHA KIDS, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT THERE?"

Mabel wordlessly presented the object to the demon, smirking. It was a blue stone set in a black bolo tie.

"WOAH!" Bill exclaimed, flipping over. "H-HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO COME ACROSS _THAT?"_

"We don't have to tell you."

The demon squinted his one eye. The Mystic Amulet? How do two kids who haven't even gone through puberty get ahold of something like _that?_ "…WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT, KIDS?"

Dipper shrugged. "Nothing. We just want to make a deal. Isn't that why you came here in the first place? To make a deal?"

Bill Cipher leaned back. "I'M LISTENING."

The boy looked at his twin, who nodded approvingly, before turning back to Bill, saying, "We want a second one. There are two of us and one amulet."

"THAT'S…THAT'S QUITE A LOT OF POWER, KIDS, ARE YOU SURE YOU DON'T WANT A NEW HOUSE OR SOMETHING? REVENGE ON YOUR UNCLE? I COULD EASILY GIVE HIM A THIRD EYE!"

"Um, no," Mabel Gleeful said, annoyed. "We want a second stone."

"AND WHAT DO I GET OUT OF IT?"

The girl shrugged. "What do you want?"

"HMMM. WHAT A QUESTION! ARE YOU WILLING TO BIND YOURSELF TO ME FOR ALL ETERNITY?"

The twins looked at each other once more before whispering in union, "Yes."

Bill Cipher twirled his triangular body with glee. Humans sure do stupid things for power! "GREAT! HERE YOU GO, KID!" He pulled a twin amulet out of the air and flipped it at the twins - Mabel caught it and, realizing it was not a bolo tie like the other, but a headband, cautiously put it behind her ears.

The young girl smiled to herself. The headband was a bit big, yes, but she would grow into it. But right now, she could feel the power radiating off of it and that was all that mattered.

Bill Cipher glowered. "NOW, _MY CHILDREN."_

"Woah, woah, hold up, Billy," Dipper smirked, approaching the demon with confidence. "We're not _your_ children - it is true that we are bound to you, but _you_ are also bound to _us."_

Mabel added, "It's like…You're _our_ demon. Our pretty little pet demon."

With a twin on either side of him, Bill began to feel slightly uncomfortable. "O-OKAY, GUYS, I WAS JOKING ABOUT THE I'M-BOUND-TO-YOU-FOR-ETERNITY THING!"

Mabel giggled childishly. Her amulet began to glow.

"H-HEY, STOP THAT!" Bill scolded. He could feel its magic taking ahold of him. "YOU'RE AMULET MAY BE POWERFUL, BUT IT'S NOT AS POWERFUL AS ME!"

The girl started, rolling her eyes, "Individually, no…"

Dipper grinned. The bolo tie clutched in his hand also began to glow an ethereal blue. "But _together…"_

Bill Cipher could not fathom what was happening. He had never been overpowered by humans before! Much less, two little children! But the magic produced by the twins gripped the demon as if the space around him had begun to collapse on itself. "S-STOP!" he once-powerful being shrieked.

The amulets stopped glowing and Bill Cipher would have been gasping for breath, had he had any lungs."

"We can't kill you, so don't worry about that," Dipper explained.

"But we _can_ put you in a world of misery and pain," Mabel added happily.

"So I'd think it would be a lot easier for us all if you would be so kind to cooperate."

Bill Cipher stared at the floor.

The twins turned around, conversing among themselves in loud enough voices that Bill could hear them.

"It will be nice to have our own personal demon around," Dipper mused.

"Yes. Think of all the pranks we could pull!"

"And - " The boy's foot fell upon the dead rabbit, rancid and rotting. Both twins stopped to stare. And like little children who had found a new toy, they began playing with its empty eye sockets and odoriferous organs once again, ignoring the pathetic demon in the background.

Bill Cipher sniffled and shuddered at his defeat. Defeated! By a couple of eight year olds! He faded quietly back into the mindscape, knowing that whatever peace he may find there would soon be abolished, as he was now bound to the Gleeful twins.

Four years later, the Tent of Telepathy made its debut in Gravity Falls and the Gleeful twins that ran the show did a lot more than just pranks.


	2. Chapter 1

Pacifica Southeast thought her hot pink light-up Sketchers sneakers were very cool. Very cool, indeed. They were _totally_ not at all tacky and stupid.

" _Totally_ not tacky and stupid. Honestly! Coming from a circus freak!" Pacifica yelled, exasperated.

"I mean," she continued. "Who's the one that wears, like, bright blue spandex? Huh? Huh?"

"Uh…."

"And her eyes are so…BLUE! Like, I know the spandex brings out her eyes and all, but honestly, that girl needs to _chill_ with the blue."

"D-do I know you?"

"Hm?" The blonde swung her head around to face the boy. "Oh, sorry." She grinned a blinding smile of metal braces and laughed to herself. "I guess I just got carried away!"

The boy stared at her.

"You can leave now, if you want!" Pacifica encouraged.

The boy ran out the door of the Mystery Shack.

Paz breathed in deeply the air of the empty Shack. The last tourist bus had left and it was just her and the over-worked teenager who manned the cashier.

"Hey, Robbie!" The fourteen-year-old chided gleefully as she swung herself up next to the register.

"It's _Robert,"_ the teenager corrected as he flipped turned the page of a thick paperback.

Paz ignored him. "Whatcha reading?"

Robbie Valentino sat up straighter and delicately closed the cover of the novel he had been previously reading. "It's _Pride and Prejudice,"_ he said, somewhat stiffly. "Not like _you_ would know that."

Paz laughed. "Robbie, _everyone's_ heard of _Pride and Prejudice_! Tell me when you're reading something a bit more pretentious, no?"

The blonde looked at the screen door, which was still swinging to a squeaky close from the last tourist who had just departed. "Was that the last bus?" she asked to nobody. It was a rhetorical question - Paz was a people-watcher and had the comings and goings of everybody in Gravity Falls clearly etched into her mind. The liberated tourists had been the last ones of the day.

Robbie walked over to the window of the Shack to change the "Open" sign to "Closed". "Yeah, those were the last ones."

"Aw," Paz pouted. "I'm gonna be bored for the rest of the day!"

"Pacifica, this happens every day."

Ignoring the cashier, Paz let out a groan and let herself fall to the wooden floor of the Mystery Shack. "This is, like, totally gonna be the _worst_ summer vacation ever! There's nothing ever to do in Gravity Falls!"

"Don't you have summer homework to do?" Robbie inquired, slightly condescendingly. "You're going into high school in the fall - it's not easy, you know."

Pacifica scoffed. "Like _you_ would know, smartass," she mumbled to herself.

"Did you say something?"

"No!" She shook her head. "Never mind. I'm going outside."

xXx

Outside in the northwestern forest was a bit more humid and hot than in the Mystery Shack. But Pacifica Southeast was a girl of constant motion; she was always twiddling her thumbs or pacing or tangling a finger or two in her long blonde hair.

She liked being outside, even if she did not always blend in. The unofficial dress code of Gravity Falls was earthy colors and flannel, almost as if the citizens were trying to blend into the background. Paz, to say the least, looked like a background dancer for an 80′s Madonna music video. And that was not really a bad thing, at least to her it wasn't. She felt herself as a Christmas ornament bouncing around the piney grounds of the Mystery Shack; fun and pretty.

"Hey!"

Paz stopped her upbeat roaming when she heard the cry of a very distressed and panicked voice.

"Hey!" it called again.

She turned around to see the same boy who she had held up in the gift shop just moments ago; the same white-haired, chubby boy who appeared to be a few years younger than her. He was running and yelling at the forest.

It seemed that he was trying to gasp something out to Paz. But whatever his message was, it was lost between his panting.

"Um," she asked. "Are you okay?"

He was gasping, face red and and curly white hair sweaty. "Y-YOU!" he managed to squeak out before falling splat onto the grass. He waved his chubby little legs in the air. Then he dedicated the next few minutes to catching his breath.

Pacifica leaned close to his ear and repeated, "Are you okay?"

The white-haired boy started, startled, and mumbled something out that she could not comprehend.

"Okay," Paz said, and she proceeded to sit down next to the nervous wreck of child.

She tapped her hand on the ground; looked around at the scenery; how did one comfort a distressed child? Hesitantly, she began to pat his puffy white hair.

He wheezed in retaliation before sitting straight up. At least, she thought he sat up to get her to stop petting him until he threw off an old, brown backpack and began hastily rummaging through it.

" _A phone? A lollypop?"_ Paz thought to herself. What on earth could he be so desperate to have?

An inhaler, it seemed, was the answer. It was blue (Paz HATED the color blue) and plastic and she watched as he closed his eyes and took a few deep breathes of the silly-looking (it was _BLUE_ ) appliance.

He took a deep breath, and when it seemed that he would not die, pointed towards Pacifica and cried, "Y-you made me miss the bus! Y-you holed me up in your house and made me m-miss my bus!"

Paz looked at the boy for a good while before realizing that he was mad at her. "Oh, gee," she apologized, but not with quite enough emotion for her antagonist's liking, "Sorry, I guess." She blushed and began to draw imaginary circles in the grass with one painted pink pointer finger. "Do you have a cell phone on you?"

"No," the boy huffed. "I'm twelve."

"It's okay - I don't have a phone either and I'm fourteen. But I think the Mystery Shack does."

Pacifica stood up. When the white-haired boy below her did not even take a step, she resulted to lifting him herself.

The boy shrieked; this girl was a lot stronger than she looked! "P-put me down! Or I - I'll call the cops!"

Paz blinked. "Really? In the middle of the woods?" She gestured to the nothings of the setting, but still put the angry child down. She almost laughed; he was so short. And angry. It was sort of hilarious.

He huffed off, red in the face, towards the Mystery Shack with the intent of getting the to the telephone himself.

If he thought he could do this by himself, Paz wouldn't force her help upon him. She was more than happy to stay outside, twiddling her thumbs and staring up at the sky.

"The door's locked!" he shrieked as he hung against the unrelenting screen door of the Mystery Shack. Pacifica was more than happy to help him.


	3. Chapter 2

"Sorry, bro," Pacifica shrugged, hanging up the old cord phone belonging to the Mystery Shack. The buzz of the dial tone was suffocated and snuffed out.

The white-haired boy sighed pathetically and slumped against the paneled wood of the wall. His parents had not picked up the phone, to his dismay.

"Hey, hey," comforted Paz. "It's okay. Look; you can stay with me in the Mystery Shack! Isn't that great?"

Her guest's attitude did not noticeably improve.

"Umm..." Paz stood, puzzled. Usually her upbeat presence and unfaltering optimism was enough to put people in a good mood, but this boy seemed to have a critical case of negative energy infecting his system and screwing with his inner chi, as her mother would say. "What's your name," she asked, not knowing where to lead the practically one-sided conversation. Also, knowing someone's name is somewhat useful in these types of situations.

The boy mumbled something.

"I can't hear you, honey," Paz cooed. "Maybe if you lifted your chin up."

"Gideon," he said.

"Gideon," she repeated. "Oh, that's a nice name," she insisted. Her mind quickly surfed her options - what would her mother do? Say something comforting - no, that didn't seem to work on Gideon. Hug him? Paz wished he would allow her to; hugs were her specialty. What else could lighten his mood? Let's see...

Paz plucked a blue and white trucker hat from one of the many merch shelves of the tent and placed it on Gideon's head. She smiled. "Free stuff!"

Gideon touched the hat with a pine tree insignia embroidered on it.

"Wanna go into town?" she asked.

Gideon looked up from the floor. "Really?"

"Yeah!" Pacifica's face split into a grin as she slung an arm around her new friend. _Now_ she was getting somewhere! "There's a ton of stuff to see in Gravity Falls! There's a museum and a neat graveyard and this one _really good_ fro-yo place - "

Gideon piped up, "Is there a library?"

"Yeah! Of course!"

"I'd like to go to the library," Gideon responded, shyly.

"Absolutely no problem!" Paz, still smiling, ruffled Gideon's hair.

She quickly ran across the floor of the Mystery Shack like a hot-pink bolt of lightning to the doorframe separating the gift shop from living quarters. "Dad!" she shrieked. "I'm going out!" She darted past Gideon and out the front door, lingering just long enough to hold open the screen door for her acquaintance.

"If we're lucky," she giggled as the two walked along the dirt road from the Mystery Shack to the paved street that would lead them into downtown Gravity Falls. "We might see Robbie walking home from work! Promise me you'll help me sneak up on him?"

Gideon, who had no clue who Robbie was, laughed nervously. "Ha, ha. yeah."

Paz went on, "That dork really needs to lighten up."

The two crossed the bridge that separated the Mystery Shack from the rest of Gravity Falls, where the dirt and gravel road welded itself into a real street. The forest where the Mystery Shack was located dabbled out until pine trees only splattered the seeable world instead of engulfing it entirely.

The ceaseless sounds of the creek dimmed slowly behind them when they came across the tent.

Pacifica simply rolled her eyes and tugged at Gideon's sweaty hand, pulling him away from the alluring, almost magical, glow of the baby blue tent that guarded the entrance to the town.

The accursed tent was situated in a lot that acted as both a field and parking lot, the once-green grass faded with the dust kicked-up by patrons and starched dead and dry by the constant comings-and-goings of vehicles.

Breaking the atmosphere of a rural forest were numerous tacky billboards, some lit up by flickering bulbs, the same shade as the tent they advertised. _**"The Tent of Telepathy!"**_ they read, in five-foot high letters. Gaping at the invisible camera with white smiles and brilliantly blue eyes were two teenagers either painted extraordinarily realistically or photoshopped to the extreme - no one, it was assumed, could look _that_ perfect in the flesh.

If one were to continue reading, they would have learned the names of the adolescents gracing the billboards: Dipper and Mabel Gleeful ( _ **"Home of Psychic Twins, Dipper and Mabel Gleeful!"**_ ).

The sight, although familiar, never ceased to make Pacifica feel quite nervous. Gideon, on the other hand, seemed to be intrigued by the colors and faded glamour of the Tent of Telepathy.

"We saw this place on the way in," he noted.

"Did you stop by?"

"No..."

Paz nodded curtly in approval. "Good."

"What's so bad about it?" Gideon asked, still marveling the magical lot that held the Tent of Telepathy.

Paz huffed. "Those - those _crooks_ think that they can set up their little freak show directly across from the Mystery Shack! Do you know how much attendance has been down since they arrived? It's so stupid!"

Pacifica Southeast did not like to think of herself as a mean person, but if she were to hate anyone in the world it was most _certainly_ be the twins, the golden children of Gravity Falls.

"And everyone loves them!" she shrieked on. "And they're horrible! Absolutely horrible! You hear that?" Paz shook her fist at the portraits looking, well, _gleefully_ down on them. "You all are stupid buttheads!"

"You know," Gideon added meekly. "Our tour bus was _supposed_ to stop by the Tent of Telepathy, but I missed it 'cause I got lost in the museum. I never got to see it."

"Consider yourself lucky," Paz huffed. "You don't want to be anywhere near those lying, cheating, thieves - ugh!" The girl took a few deep breaths and mouthed some soothing words to herself.

"Getting this riled up is really bad for my chi," she said, once her fists had unclenched and her face was less red. "Come on, Gideon, let's go to the library."

She began again to pull her new friend in the direction of downtown Gravity Falls. However, this time, she met some resistance from the normally-timid boy.

Gideon bit his lips nervously, still eyeing the Tent of Telepathy. "I - uh," he stuttered, not quite looking his friend in the eye. "I kinda don't wanna go to the library anymore."

And so somehow Pacifica Southeast ended up paying for two tickets to the Tent of Telepathy because pathetic twelve-year-olds are really hard to say no to.

They were tickets of medium quality and got the two some generic audience tickets. They sat on a cheap unfolded chair that faced a much more elaborate wooden stage. A multi-colored star watched over them, flickering blue lights dancing around the edges.

Paz wrinkled her nose in disgust. "This place seems to have gotten _more_ sleazy since the last time I was here..."

Gideon quickly hushed his friend as he noticed the ambient stage lights dimming down and the audience's rattle fade into a murmur.

A mezzo-piano tune began to plink away on a piano hidden somewhere in the shadows of the tent, a decrepitly cheery song that wrapped itself around the patrons' heads, squirming into their bodies so that their entire attention was directed to the center stage.

Somewhere, a drum sounded and a disembodied voice announced,

" **PRESENTING TO YOU THE PSYCHIC SIBLINGS OF GRAVITY FALLS, THE TWINS OF TELEPATHY, DIPPER AND MABEL GLEEFUL!"**

Strutting onto the stage were two adolescents even more perfect in appearance than their billboard counterparts.

The female twin had a certain dramatic flair to her, like showmanship came naturally to her. Her strides were long and sexy and she radiated a genuine smile and approval of the audience.

Her brother, however, acted more stilted, but still just as pleasing. It was obvious that unlike his sister, this boy was not born with an aptitude for performance and instead had to learn his act. His movements were more mechanical, more precisely planned and thought-out.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the girl beamed. "Welcome to the Tent of Telepathy! My name is Mabel and this is my brother Dipper." She gestured to the stiff adolescent behind her, who nodded in acknowledgement of his introduction. "And we are the Gleeful twins!"

The audience, which seemed to have been suppressing its excitement before, now roared with thunderous applause.

Mabel continued her opening speech, charisma absolutely radiating off of her glittering white teeth. Although the spectators were nothing but polite to their dear Gleeful twins, the consistent hum of excitement they gave off never overpowered the girl's voice.

As far as the spectators could see, the twins lived up to their infamous hype.

There was an act where Mabel balanced on the top of a black rod en pointe while her brother tossed knives at her frame. The girl would pluck the weapons from thin air with less effort than it would take to pick an apple. It seemed that the flying blades slid themselves between her forefinger and thumb voluntarily, as if she were controlling them. Then she'd twirl the tip of the knife a bit on her index finger before throwing it sharply to the ground, where it embedded itself in the wooden floor with a hard _thunk._

In another amazing feat, the twins levitated off of the earth and floated effortlessly over the audience. They witnessed the soles of their shoes closer to the ceiling than the floor.

These must be miracles, the crowd mused. No two children could be as talented, as clever as the Gleefuls to have orchestrated such spectacles of splendor. It was not the miracles the crowd came to see, though, no, it was the messiahs who performed them. Mabel, with her sexy stilettos and charming nature, and Dipper, with his stoic demeanor and handsome looks, had dominated the audience's imagination.

Twirling on the worn wooden stage in a cloud of blue and black, nothing less than the glittering make-up on their faces and the pacific smiles they gave the audience gave any indication that the twins were planning to give up their mystical secrets any time soon.

Oh, if you could have been there yourself. You would have loved it.

And so for their grand finale, there was hardly any shortage of volunteers who wished to be immortalized in the show.

Mabel casually scanned the audience, eyes unfazed – this was exactly how she pictured her life as a child; herself, on a stage, with dozens of people willing to sacrifice themselves to her. At random, she picked a member of the audience, a certain white-haired boy.

"Step right up, young man, yes, you, with the white h-" The showgirl was unable to finish her rehearsed lines when she got a closer look at the boy she was inviting up to the stage.

The boy shifted awkwardly in his seat, confused by the mixed signals Mabel was giving him.

" _Not him,"_ Mabel thought. _"Not today, at least."_

Instead, the Gleeful plucked another member of the audience – some random man she had never seen before, most definitely some kind of tourist. No one would miss him.

And so, the finale went on in its rehearsed fashion. The man was entombed in a black coffin, which was levitated in some magical way.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Mabel cried. "For our final act, we will make this man disappear!"

The crowd roared.

The twins milked swords out of thin air, glossy and sharp and silver, and, with expert swordsmanship, sheathed the swords into the coffin. The tips of the weapons protruded from the other side, something that would have fatally maimed a person, had there been one inside.

But there was no person, for after the blades had been removed, the coffin was opened to reveal an empty interior. Yes, there may have been marks and scars from the swords, but the man inside had vanished.

The audience screeched in delight as the Gleeful twins bowed, the clanking tune of the piano being produced once again by a phantom player, and the curtains closed, shielding the twins away from the prying eyes of people who would might want to peek backstage.

xXx

In the background, a certain pair of twins distanced themselves from the crowd, preferring to fill the hazy shadows with their presence. They peaked from behind a powder blue curtain to spy on one white-haired boy in particular.

"It's him," the girl whispered to her brother. "It's the boy we've been waiting for!"

Dipper smiled at Mabel's breathless excitement - after all this time, their plan and prophecy years in the making was beginning to look less like a distant star.

"Patient, sister," he warned. "remember the rules of the game; the light side typically makes the first move."

Mabel gave a slasher-worthy smile. "Oh, but, brother dear, I just cannot _wait_ to play!"


End file.
